


left inside a half life

by herwhiteknight



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, i can't figure out what else to tag it other than that, inspired entirely by erin's maiden au and starset lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 16:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16537943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herwhiteknight/pseuds/herwhiteknight
Summary: She's dreamed for centuries, always the same. But she never remembers anything more than faint images that vanish and a lasting sense of feeling hollow. What was the point of having a universe if there was no one to light it with you?





	left inside a half life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [explosivesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosivesky/gifts).
  * Inspired by [walk where the wild things grow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13943010) by [explosivesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosivesky/pseuds/explosivesky). 



> I don't really have an explanation for this fic other than I read Erin's maiden AU fic awhile back, got fucked up by it and wanted to write something for it kinda. Also Starset. Because listening to their songs always makes me want to write fics with space imagery. So much space imagery that it's not even imagery anymore it's just the setting of the fic. Except not at the same time. *shrug*

Yang hated empty spaces. They reminded her too much of what she lost, what she’d given up. Empty expanses of things she filled with a snap of her finger, an errant thought of desire. Spaces she filled with worlds and words and music. With light.

But that part… that was always Blake’s specialty. And now Blake was gone.

 

* * *

 

Blake only dreamed once every few centuries. Like the breath of an incoming tide, she’d feel it coming. The images were always this close to illusions, like a far off breaking wave, motion evident but distance never closing. Until it was right on top of her and-

She’d remember having the faintest feeling of a memory climbing through the valves and chambers of her heart. Which was an odd thing to feel, given that she was sure she never had anything like that before. A heart, a body… but she needed neither of those to exist so why-

Why did she know what breathing felt like? How did she know anything beyond the expanse of her universe, endlessly stretching around her? She’d been here, amongst the stars, for as long as she remembered.

But if that were true… where then did these memories come from?

Thoughts of spiralling fire and spinning ash collided, breaking over her in waves, energy pulsing through her greater than any supernova she’d ever witnessed. And she knew she’d seen a lot. This existence, in this space, was all she ever knew.

Wasn’t it?

The fire collapsed through her, drawing her downwards with the weight of a black hole, with the heaviness of something Blake found she could only call _destiny._ “You’ll remember this,” a star whispered to her left.

“You were more than this space could ever know.”

“You weren’t contained,” a voice flared, its rage and volcanic passion _familiar_ in some way. Some way that felt like destiny.

Blake turned, because the weight of the voice suddenly pulled her stronger than gravity, and it felt like she wasn’t supposed to be _anywhere else._ Like this voice was all that mattered. Two dancing red giants circled each other in an orbit, sucking Blake into the middle of the vortex. “You were too strong to ever be tied down,” the voice said, and it shattered Blake all the way down to her bones.

She knew what those were now. Somehow. The crashing tides of memories came faster now, matching to the swirling vortex and overwhelming her.

“How do you know this?” Blake rippled across the shaking atmosphere, certain that this voice wouldn’t hear her at all - she was too small amidst all this power. She _knew_ this universe, she belonged to this universe, she may have even _made_ parts of this universe but.. this voice. This voice was above it all.

Even so, her words were enough. The twin giants slowed, and out flowed remorse from the eye of the vortex, sinking and soaking through the air surrounding Blake. Saturating. “Nothing would tear you from the things you were passionate about,” the voice said, and the weight of its sorrow sent them three plummeting farther than the burning black hole.

“What was I passionate about?” she asked, twisting to face the stars that flickered and ignited, solar flares exploded forth from each of their surfaces at random.

“Your home,” the voice shuddered, tiny vibrations shimmering outwards from its gravity. “Your friends. Family. The people you loved. And someone very dear to you. But.. you’ve forgotten.”

_A flash of red. A volcanic eruption. A hint of laughter and a soft hand in hers._ “There are some things I remember!” she fought back, gathering her own light, bundling stars in her rage like a clenched fist, just to stand next to these twin red lights that suddenly now seemed to small.

There was a long pause from the voice. The stars beneath the twins shifted, assembled into a thin line and - there was something just vaguely familiar about their placement, the way it all seemed to _look_ right at her-

“Then I should not be here at all,” the voice said, regret now joining the outflow for a singular moment in time. Then everything vanished. And everything fell to empty, became drained. Muted and violent all at once.

But worst of all, Blake had understood something about her world, her existence. And now she was just alone once more.

 

* * *

 

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I had to see her! I had to _know_!” she yelled. “You don’t know what it’s like - _neither of you!_ I lost her! I lost - _everything_!”

“We understand your situation, Yang, truly-”

“No! You don’t! You can’t understand what this, any of this! You don’t know how much it _hurts_.”

“Now-”

“It was _my fault!_ ” she burst out, eyes raining fire around her, ash falling from her hair. “I let her go, I _made_ her go. And she remembers me, and I can’t stay and I _made her go._ ”

“She couldn’t stay with us.”

“I would’ve rather died,” she murmured, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes, dousing the fire with something other than the salt against her eyelids. “Now she’s alone up there, and I can’t bring her back.”

 

* * *

 

Blake began to see signs that the universe she drifted amongst wasn’t entirely her own. She couldn’t explain it, but traces of those twin flames had left their mark on everything they’d touched, even long after they’d disappeared. It wasn’t visible in a sense of shapes, lights and shadows but rather just… a matching frequency, a rhythmic wavelength that Blake could follow to its source.

Like a spool of thread tied around the tiniest finger. A reminder. _Someone very dear to you. Someone you’ve forgotten._

It had been a long time since she’d dreamed anything beyond the remarkable. It’d been nothing but the same recurring feeling of volcanic passion, the separation of an ocean and burning red eyes that didn’t speak a word except to say that _I’d die for you_.

Eyes that Blake had _seen_.

“ _Oh_ ,” she gaped, focusing her energy on the faint feeling they evoked and found herself transported back to where the red twins once danced. They were gone, of course, but… as was everything else.

The eyes, _she_ (for there was no way that sort of fierce protective passion could’ve come from anything else) had taken everything else with her, leaving a gaping expanse where stars just didn’t exist.

“You were here when you weren’t supposed to be,” Blake whispered to herself, stretching out along the gap and concentrating her energy. “Maybe this is where I can find you again.”

 

* * *

 

Yang dreamt of the same thing every night. The moment she couldn’t move on from, torturing her until she gasped for breath, grasping for a hand that was no longer at her side. A hand that hadn’t been there for centuries. There had been bodies and lives that hadn’t known _her_ touch.

Could they really call her stupid, say of her that she was foolish, selfish, a danger to them all? She just wasn’t able to hold on without _something_ to ground her. And it wasn’t like she didn’t know where to find her.

Yang _was_ the one who had sent her away in the first place.

She sighed, unclenching her hand from a fistful of sheets that weren’t nearly as soft as she’d wanted them to be, and rolled over. She knew sleeping would mean just returning to that scene but, what else could she do? There wasn’t anything for her here.

 

* * *

 

“Okay. Here goes nothing,” she said, the stars ringing the gap shuddering like an avalanche about to collapse, teetering on the edge of an invisible cliff. And Blake was about to willingly lose herself to the abyss.

Concentrating, she pulled energy from the stars, cracking the universe even further from the point of origin left behind by the twins. Those eyes.

_Her_ eyes.

She’d see them again. She had to.

 

* * *

 

Light blinded her. Yang blinked, shielded her eyes with a hand, instantly roused from sleep. She hadn’t seen light like that in… centuries. _There was no way... it couldn’t…._

“Hello?” she asked, reverent, words falling from her lips like a prayer. How _else_ did one greet the lover they’d banished? The lover they’d never wanted to leave?

 

" _This is for the best,” she’d said, cradling Yang’s face, watching tears stream from the dying sunsets in her eyes._

“ _Please, I… I can’t do this to you. I can’t let you go - I won't!” Yang clinged to her ever more desperately, pulling her in for a desperately frantic kiss, colliding and imperfect and soon-to-be forgotten._

“ _You_ have _to,” Blake said, returning the kiss before pressing in close, burying her face in Yang’s still-burning hair. And nothing smelled sweeter._ She did all this. For me, _Blake thought. “I’ll come back for you, I promise. You’ll see me again, my love.”_

“ _But you’ll forget - for this to work, you have-”_

“ _I’ll find my way back to you._ We’ll _find our way back.”_

 

* * *

 

“It’s _you_ ,” Blake gasped, arriving in the brightness alongside a woman with golden hair and burning red eyes. The stars that danced, the lips that she’d wanted to kiss.

“You found your way back,” Yang turned to her, lips parting softly.

“And _you_ came for me,” Blake replied, her hand drifting upwards of its own consciousness to cup Yang’s cheek. Like it’d never left. Yang leaned into her touch, like she hadn’t forgotten. Neither of them had.

“You had promised me that, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Blake nodded through tears, lifting her other hand and touching her forehead to Yang’s. “Because everything felt _cold_ without you. I didn’t even know why. I didn’t know it was you.”

“It doesn’t matter now though, does it?” Yang murmured, wrapping her arms around Blake and pulled her close, overwhelmed.

“No,” Blake said, burying her face in Yang’s hair that smelled like light and the lives she’d missed out on. “You’re here. And that’s all that matters.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, if you haven't read Erin's (explosivesky) fic "walk where the wild things grow" aka the maiden au, do that right fucking now. Or, you know, whenever you have a whole day to spare, bc trust me, you'll need it.


End file.
